arrived in town.  Like wild fire the news flew.  D.R. was in pursuit of him when father reached his office.  He thought you were not hurt.  Mother said that night, “I can go to sleep now there is a hope that Merritt still lives;” but father said:  “I suppose I shall sleep when nature is tired out, but the hope that my son has survived brings little solace to my soul while the cause of all this terrible wrong remains untouched."...

Your fish pole never caught so luscious a basketful as it has this afternoon.  I made a march through the peach orchard with pole in hand to fish down the soft Early Crawfords that had escaped even the keen eyes of father and mother when they made their last detour.  As the pole reached to the top-most bough and down dropped the big, fat, golden, red-cheeked Crawfords, thought went away to the owner of the rod, how he in days gone by planted these little trees, pruned them and nursed them and now we were enjoying the fruits of his labor, while he, the dear boy, was away in the prairie wilds of Kansas.  I thought of many things as I walked between the rows to spy out every ambushed, not enemy but friend of the palate.  With the haul made I filled the china fruit dish and then hallooed for Mary L. and Ann Eliza to see what I had found, and down they came for a feast.  I shall send Aaron and Guelma the nicest ones and how I wish my dearest brother could have some to cool his fevered throat.

Evening.—­Father brings the Democrat giving a list of killed, wounded and missing, and the name of our Merritt is not therein, but oh! the slain are sons, brothers and husbands of others as dearly loved and sadly mourned.

Later.—­Your letter is in to-day’s Democrat, and the Evening Advertiser says there is “another letter from our dear brother in this morning’s Shrieker for Freedom.”  The tirade is headed “Bleeding Kansas.”  The Advertiser, Union and American all ridicule the reports from Kansas, and even say your letters are gotten up in the Democrat office for political effect.  I tell you, Merritt, we have “border ruffians” here at home—­a little more refined in their way of outraging and torturing the lovers of freedom, but no less fiendish.

Miss Anthony was busy through September and October securing speakers for the national convention.  She still believed that her chief strength lay in her executive ability.  Having written Lucy Stone that she could not and would not speak, the latter answered:  “Why do you say the people won’t listen to you, when you know you never made a speech that was not attentively heard?  All you need is to cultivate your power of expression.  Subjects are so clear to you that you can soon make them as clear to others.”  In response to an invitation to the Hutchinson family to sing at the convention, Asa wrote:  “The time is coming, I hope, when we can do something for the glorious cause which you are so nobly advocating.”  John added:  “It would rejoice my heart to be at the convention and help along, with the one talent God has given me, the greatest reform ever attempted by lovers of the human race.”  Miss Anthony asked Mary L. Booth, at that time just beginning to attract attention by her fine translations, to speak at the coming convention and received this touching response: